This was the first Giro featuring Italy's last great cycling rivalry, that of Giuseppe Saronni and Francesco Moser.

Smarting from a string of foreign winners, the Giro organization built the 1979 edition to favor Saronni and Moser. There were five time trials and climbing was kept to a minimum. Saronni was having a very good year and beat Moser at almost every step.

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With the exception of Gimondi’s and Bertoglio’s victories, the 1970s had been difficult for the tifosi to endure. Belgians (Merckx, Pollentier and de Muynck) and a Swede (Pettersson) had been sweeping in from the north for a decade, sacking and pillaging their race, ruining the afternoon games of dominos at the local bars. Pollentier, Pettersson and de Muynck struck the Italians as excellent but dull racers. Where were the polemiche, where was the excitement?

Now Torriani had two terrific Italian racers who were delighting their countrymen with victories all over Europe. SCIC had contemplated bringing Giuseppe Saronni to the 1977 Giro, his first year as a pro, but a crash in the Tour of Romandie a few days before the Giro’s start kept the nineteen-year-old racer from being subjected to a Grand Tour well before he was ready. That year he still won Tour of Veneto and the Tre Valle Varesine. In 1978 he won the Tirreno–Adriatico, and three Giro stages, coming in fifth in the Overall.

Francesco Moser had added to his list of prestigious victories by taking Paris–Roubaix. This was the year Moser and de Vlaeminck, both riding for Sanson, confounded their competitors’ expectations. Instead of aiming for Paris–Roubaix, which de Vlaeminck had already won a record-setting four times, he took Milan–San Remo while Moser completed the unintentional trade and won the cobbled Classic in front of de Vlaeminck by attacking at the precise point de Vlaeminck had planned on making good his escape.

While Moser and Saronni were amassing their victories, the tifosi split their allegiance in what so far was the last great Italian rivalry. While both were excellent time trialists, they were vulnerable in the high mountains. Moser had tried the Tour de France in 1975, winning the prologue time trial and keeping the Yellow Jersey until stage six. He finished in seventh place, more than 24 minutes behind winner Bernard Thévenet, but he never returned, finding the Tour’s climbing not at all to his liking.

What was Torriani to do? Easy. Design the flattest postwar Giro and put in five (that’s right, five) time trials. The two stars could flog each other on terrain suited to their gifts and the tifosi could go nuts. While Torriani may have been particularly overt in designing this Grand Tour for these two particular riders (some writers say Torriani had only Moser in mind), all three Grand Tour organizations have designed races for preferred riders.

Indeed, Torriani knew his boys. After the smoke had cleared from the eight-kilometer prologue time trial in Florence, Moser was in pink with Saronni just three seconds back. The game was afoot.

South to Naples for the third stage time trial, this one 31 kilometers long, giving Moser enough distance to create a significant gap—26 seconds over Saronni in the stage and 29 seconds in the General Classification. Moser had been accused of letting his form slip a bit after an excellent spring Classics season, but his 49.56 kilometers per hour says that there was still plenty of good stuff left in his legs.

De Muynck and two-time Tour winner Bernard Thévenet had their hopes crushed in the next day’s 210 kilometers of hilly roads through Campania and Basilicata, both losing more than seven minutes. Bertoglio’s two-minute loss probably put his name in the no-hoper column as well while Moser and Saronni finished together.

The tifosi had marked the stage eight time trial from Rimini to the top of San Marino on their calendars as a bellwether day, and Saronni rode the 28 kilometers like a rocket. Moser lost a minute and a half and the maglia rosa. Historian Sandro Picchi dates the real beginning of the Moser/Saronni rivalry from that hot day in May.

Viral conjunctivitis was bedeviling many riders in the peloton. Moser was infected; Battaglin and his Inoxpran squad were so badly hit the team withdrew before the Giro’s start.

The next episode in this Giro of big-gear time trial power tests was in the Ligurian town of Lerici, and the Vikings were back. Norwegian Knut Knudsen won the stage, bringing him to with eighteen seconds of Saronni, who in turn had taken about a half minute out of Moser.

When he designed the flat 1979 route, Torriani wasn’t completely without shame. Stage fourteen ended at the top of the Bosco Chiesanuova climb, just outside Verona. Bernt Johansson was first to the summit, but Moser dug deep and finished just 2 seconds behind the Swede. But even that superhuman effort did him little good—Knudsen and Saronni were only a second behind him.
The two non-climbers would settle this during the three days of racing in the Dolomites.

Day one: Saronni beat Moser into Pieve di Cadore by 6 seconds after the peloton climbed Monte Rest and the Mauria. Half of the Norse threat was neutralized by Luciano Pezzi, manager of Johansson’s Magniflex team, when he hit Knut Knudsen with the team car.
The rivalry between Saronni and Moser was starting to get a bit raw. Moser told Saronni that he would try to make him lose the Giro. Moser’s mother scolded him for such unsportsmanlike sentiments. The dislike Saronni and Moser felt for each other was real. Saronni was quick with a biting riposte and seemed to enjoy getting a rise out Moser.

Day two: the two major climbs, the Falzarego and Pordoi came many kilometers before the finish, allowing twenty riders to coalesce before the sprint, probably exactly as Torriani had planned. Moser won the trip to his hometown of Trent with Saronni finishing just with him. Saronni prudently decided to let Moser have the stage and shut down his own sprint in the town that loved Moser best.

Day three: stage eighteen had the Tonale and Aprica climbs, but again they came far too early in the stage to allow the real climbers to gain time. The uphill drag to the finish in the small Alpine town of Valsássina, north of Milan, failed to bust things up, Saronni beating Moser by 3 seconds. Saronni now led Moser by 1 minute 48 seconds.

That left the fifth and final time trial, a run into Milan from the suburb of Cesano Maderno. At 44 kilometers, if Moser were having a good day he might have a chance. Saronni was having an even better day. He won the stage, beating Moser by 21 seconds. Saronni, 21, became the third youngest Giro winner after Fausto Coppi and Luigi Marchisio. Saronni also took the cyclamen Points Jersey, beating Moser by a single point. Ouch.